The Singer and Her Dirty Pioneers in the Lyrical Village

Cynthia Nichols

1120 37th Ave. S. Moorhead, MN 56560

218-236-8233

cindy.nichols@ndsu.edu

Contents

One

Dirty Pioneers, the State of the State, and the Fabulous Woman Who DancesFanaticsHer Famous Green Guitar PicsThe Singer's Wife is Also a SingerTinderWhat Does Music Sound LikeSong for The SingerLyrical Village

Two

Stage Presence

Three

The Contest

Four

Resort

Five

Guest Appearances by Neil Young and The Thing with FeathersEmpathy for Fat Elvis and Notes Toward the Impeachment of DreadLyrical VillageLife’s a Long, Unspooling Series of Rooms, Very Doomy Rooms,

2

...but in musicmy desolation is my rejoicing.

—Louise Glück

3

One

4

Dirty Pioneers, the State of the State, and a Fabulous Woman Who Dance

1.

Looking out in wonder, I imagine, and not unkindly,at their doofus fans and devotees, through the giant tinted windows of their megalithic bus, the Singer and her Dirty Pioneersramble all over these dirty states, a rolling holyboulder down the crazed and crumbling lanes of one sad and scary, scared America. Roadies, I’m sure, are always along,but in the Pioneers’ roadshow also spouses & kids, sisters & mums,a funny rock and roll tourright out of Exodus crossed with Flintstonesplus Patsy Cline if maybe she had marriedeveryone in Pearl Jam.

And so just the right home for a fabulous woman who dances, goes completelytornadic, I heard, doing her thing in intimate clubs, sleek civic centers,grassy heartland festivals smelling of sunblock and beer, and Venue Security, once, even had to restrain her. One time they roped off a place just for her.But the band just loves her abandon, I think they love her abandon. They even made a video of this proverbial wildcat spinningall over a vast darkened floor, completely alone to "Mainstream Kid,"lights sparking upward and her hairflailing upward and the chief thing seems to bethat she doesn't give a damn about anythingyou might call external, absolute authority.

Still, I’m not completely sure that she’s free,or only feels herself free, or if feeling freeactually does make usfree—am I overthinking this a bit?—or if she isn’t in fact doing battle, ferocious but hilarious battlewith something monumentallydifficult to dance. I mean say. I mean dance.

2. It slightly sickened and thrilled me todayto realize the only way to be freeof death is to die.

And yet there she is, the woman who dances. In flesh. At least I think

5

she’s made of flesh.

*

I saw her at a concert this year, squished into a nutsoid crowdthat was kind of trying to eatthe stage. It was New Year’s Eve in a countrylately inhospitable, you might say, a little less than welcomingto the globally homeless. And a city well-known for its colorful (you might say)criminal history, but also its blues, divine northern blues! a Loop and reverse-running river.

Anyway, there in the stir, there in the crushof that godawful crowd, I could see our dancing woman leap, I mean windright out of herself, dancingwith the very air itself. And let me tell you this: that’s not evenpossible. Or legal, I don’t think. I mean, they outlawed heavenly blisson eartha long time ago now. Clear back at the start.

The bastards.

And yet there she is. ..

*

Meanwhile, the voice that quickens the dancer and all of us,the Singer’s voice so manifestlycorrect for this human strangeness unending, meaning downright gorgeously repletewith error—little yelps and skips and hoarse-sounding, even growl-like stuff, even squeaks—is not yet illegal like heavenly joyon earth. Although maybe it should be.We don’t allow dead men walkingto listen to music, correct? Their agitationcan turn extreme. They won’t be restrained.

6

Fanatics

1.

I’m talking Row A, dead Center, practically mashedinto the stage. So you watch the concert looking straight up, or nearly.So you’re just about surgically aligned with the Truth and the Light and the Way. It’s kinda sweet, isn’t it, the nearness? the defeat?

*

Still you long for a backstage pass, the ultimate pass, a really kickass VIP ticket.You don’t know about Truth, Light, and whatever—but you imagine, at the least, that someone beloved will shake your hand, pose for a pic, write down their name in amazing letters.You may even do whisky shooters together.They’ll tell you everything.

*

Oh, I know; the band in truth is comprised of mere mortals. I’m ok about that. I already knowthat. The human celebrity never quite matchesthe luminous dot in your brainwhich is always withdrawingand dragging you along. They’re just guyswho scratch bug bites, tie their shoes crooked,hiccup like everyone else. That’s ok. That’s good.Perfect alignment only works for the planets,and perfection itself, well, is boring.

I’m not even identical to myself.

2.

, a stop-gap presence

on posters, freshly unrolled like fragile Magna Cartas;

on a used blue ticket, perhaps, still crisp or splotched with rain;

7

on some odd, ill-focused old personal photoback when the Singer busked in Seattle.

And ergo of course the big question: record or don’t record the show? LIVE the moment or KEEPthe moment? Should I try

to live-stream on Facebook for all of us the whole gorgeous wave

of it always too fast, should I leap

on stage if only in mymind or my camera's eye, get as closeas I can, should I try to inhabitall three of them rightat the moment they makethe soundand more than the sound,

the Song—

can I?

Afterwards, we all do the long and patient, not-sopatient lingering out by the stage door or bus.The show may be over, but we are not overthe show. Our longing runneth over. We cannot sufferenough. We huddle in the cold under a single bulbor chat off to the side in small groups. Maybe she’ll step out and visit, maybe she won't.Maybe she will, and we'll press to the front of the line,take her by the hand and look her in the eye—we are not yet completelybroken, or mute, or imaginary...

3.

I suppose what I longfor are contours

to complicate, colors to thicken,detail to be detailed, at last. I want a song that crunches and pops, turns out to be something you can pound with a shoe

8

or throw a rock at.

I want to say concrete differencesso minutely and truly you will finally be able to seeidentical twin bandmates preciselyapart, the delicate crinkleat the top of somebody’s ear,concise clues like the swoopof a jaw.

Problem is, if I start, say, with tattoos, I never get much further than bruiseyand the overall flow of forms down their arms.

That is, I don't see each brother's intricate, particular markingsso much as the winding of ink around and around the arm, so I have to turn my head, or turn the picture,or turn both my head and the pictureto see it…

Jack over there looks wounded and hunched overwhenever he’s really and truly rocking a solo. It’s like a heartattack or falling down into, say,some long lonely vortexto go deep to go loudand public with lead guitar.

Mac, meanwhile,is wholly unfolded and open, always mugging to the fans, his big grin beaming rock hosannasas his fingers elsewhere and unnoticed translatethe underground throb of the bass.

Did you catch that? The doubled-up muckimucks? The backwards mirror effect? The spinninggets fucking numbing, I tell you.I can’t say the two sides as they need to be said, there’s no word for different and same,

shiftingproximities intoxicating both, opposite equals advancingand withdrawing at once…

*

Let’s be clear.Aside from the Fender and Gretsch (or Martin or Collins), Jackplays to the right of the Singer, Mac

9

to the left. It’s as simple as that.

Wait! I just found on the web: Mac’s front teeth overlap just a bit. ID solved! Now I’ve only to figure out, if I spot them some day,how I’ll ask them to open their mouthsso I can stare at their teeth.

10

The Singer’s Wife is Also a Singer

The Singer says they’re both buddies and lovers, I think they share all their clothes,and I guess their take on this wide and scrappy, inscrutable world is exactly the same. They even dream exactly alike—bird homicides, something about a shoe.

Sometimes their daughter comes toddlering onstage as well.She rides either mother’s shoulders like a very large hatthat laughs.

Honestly, if you can’t fall in love with a family like thatsomething’s fucked in your heart. You’re out of whack with the world. Or you’re so in whack with yourselfthere’s absolutely no whack left over for anyone else. You’re aloneand perfectly aligned with you.How does it feel.

*

In Buddhism, nothing has inherent existence. If “I” were a solid something,with sealed up edges, as it were, I’d basically be inert. There would be no flux or birth. I wouldn’t in fact exist.

But being empty meansbeing open andin relation to all the other, incredible, whackjob forms of life, equally empty.Having no inherent existencemeans I am in fact here.

Sometimes I understand this shit, and sometimes I don’t.

*

One time they came out and did a killer “Fields of Gold.” It was genuinely something.

I could tell because it obliteratedus.

Our hearts, I mean.

11

when the west wind movesfeel her body rise

*

Because the Singer and the Singer’s wifeare not exactly alike. Don’t believe it. They wouldn’t sound so beautifultogether if they were. They wouldn't have that gigglingHat.

12

Her Famous Green Guitar Picks

1.

She tosses them out to the crowd like after-dinner mintsat the end of her most devastating performances. She’s a little bitfunny like that.

One went streaking over my head like a drone gone AWOL on Adderall.

She otherwise lines them up on the neck of the mikelike rounds of ammunition, or even the worrisome serpent of old.

A lot of people, by the way, don’t believein the mystical hoodoo I’m helplessnot to ponder. I don’t either. It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of frequent flyer miles, yeah, and listening, and pining,and like. Which can apparently go on forever.

like the worrisome serpent of old

*

I imagine a boomer couple just retired, maybe, local hipsters geeking out on a scene,or more likely some good and kind kid from two states away (she came wearing the exact floppy fedoraher favorite singer wears), amazed now to snag the prize from the airand hold it gingerly in the palm of her handlike the final word, or a key.

Then remembering she can’t rememberwhat it’s supposed to unlock.

*

And green. Green. I have to keep saying it, I want to hug the damned thing,I suppose so I do not forget. I mean verdigris, verdant, viridescent. Maybe punky? Maybe park? Like little pieces of Edenwe managed to smuggle out.

13

Like and unlikethe way people saved bricks and even pieces of bricks,even pieces of pieces you get the idea,from the Berlin wall.

Maybe good?

2.

Sometimes, when they flash like tiny green birdsabove our heavy hominoid brains,

so freely, so easily,at the end of a show,

we can’t even.

Why we long to see her live and on stage in Charleston, in October, at the height of a flood. In Fort Lauderdale spring, just before hoards of college marauders erect the kitschiestgolden calf ever. And Atlantic City in lights. The lights.Just the lights.

Because we crave that feeling of the moment going.The heart-twist of not keeping it.The heart-sink of no such luck.

No story; no grand story, certainly.

Just a skip in a voicemaking sadness absurdly luminous.

3.

She will of course glance down, now and again,at a chord she is making or about to makeon the neck of the guitar, like touching a foot to the earth for balanceor buoyancy before launching away yet again.

While actual silence itselfshe works like a pro, a very maestro of light, prolongingone unexpectedly there, and again further there—

14

in “Follow,” perhaps, then “Hard Way Home,” then “Blood Muscle Skin and Bone”—

zeroing in on “The Eye”—

for encore the famous “Hallelujah,” practically blistering with irony…

[break]

15

Tinder

The Singer is crying, crying, and no, she is not crying while singing, she is justsinging. You might even hear it as laughing.

Is isn’t is, which isn’t to say that it’s not. That’s what I think.

And she is not crying. Ohmy god the pain when she cries. We cannotbear to stop listening.

*

In one scene, in the tour documentary,the band makes the driver pull over. They’ve had it, I guess,with the bus. They spill out and over a nearby beach, freezing and windy, cloudy,a grand soul- or psyche-beach right out of Bergman or something. They are all bundled clear to their necks, they scatterin groups, a mother with baby splits from the group near the back andslows down to be wholly alone. She feels completely aloneto me. And that's ok. That's good. The way she's driftingaway into mist, the far edge of the frame, the way she seems to be lookingin, just in all the time, just lost in herself, as we say, until allthe way gone.

Funny that I keep on watching.

*

Meanwhile, the beloved Singer is walking and chattingwith someone who is walking and filming,the wind sort of making her leanforward againstthe wind. But she’s relaxed. Her voice is relaxed. She knows what it is to be looked ata lot and now feels perfectly easy, perfectly present,as though no one at all is looking.

*

She talks about bonfires—everyone knows she loves bonfires.

16

On a windy beach, she explains, they can really take off. Whereupon, she motions to describe what a very large windlikes to do to a spark. Whoooooshholyshit!She is the Singer.

Fire is.

*

Her voice cracks, there's a country western tang—No not twang; I do mean tang.You know, like what the astronauts drank. Bahahahaha!

Like, I mean, she hits a sharp note in “Hallelujah” and holds it right there till my god we're all flungway clear of the earththat we love like we lovecoming back down to the nextstrike of the match.

How to explainthat something so gloriouscan be tangy? Alright then twangy too. And funny. I think funnyis bound up in glory, some alchemy inside the Big Bang when it banged.

Damn, that singer’s so good, it’s funny. Like that.

*

Is isn’t isjust like it wasn’t when it wasand won’t be when it will be.

I only said that to be funny. I know it probably isn’t.

Derrida talked a lot about probability. But he wasn’t that Derrida.

*

Meanwhile, their unplugged national tourrequires that they more or less singtheir living guts out, naked voices in a naked theater.

17

Requires that they findthat crazily evasive needle of air, what will hurtthe most to reach people through.And yeah, they found it. They find it again and again.The weeping, the needle, the laughter not optional. What kills us alive.

18

What Does Music Sound Like

It sounds like music. Of course.

Well, sometimes. Sometimes it soundslike something else—horses galloping, or rain, maybe. Or some kind of hulking, impendingdisaster, or something big that already happened and flopped. WAH-wah.

But the really good music sounds like nothing but music. I will never understand how people can be vocalright in the middle of orgasm.

Me, I'm too busyhaving an orgasm.

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Lyrical Village

The Singer's like the adopted little sisterof her older bandmates known as the Twins.

One of the Twinsis married to the Singer's sister,

and the Singer's wife's sisteris married to the cellist.

Songs are named for the bandmembers' kids, the kidsare named after grandparents and one or more cherished aunts, cherished towns.

The Twins' beloved mom is friendswith everyone— even, on Facebook, with the band's berserk fans—

and the Singer’s mom was a beautiful, professionalcrooner herself on the country western stage.

And then there's... well. Angelina.I'll call her Angelina.

Hystericalwee little angel,

the Singer's little daughter. She's two.She may or may not be able to sing.

She mayor may not wish to.

She bursts giggling straight for the open ocean

on the beach at Quintana Roo.

*

It’s funny; I imagine the tired crew, maybe some of the familyinside the tour bus, outside the theater, after the show,

watching fans by the stage door flock.They know the fans long to speak with the Singerwho, earlier that night, from the bright stage itself,

20

in the other inside, called out the Fabulous Woman Who Dances—someone AngelinaI think is destined to be. Or not.

*

But yes, the Fabulous Woman Who Danceswas there in the molten crowd like a breach, a distinctionongoing but mending itselfalways as the crowd flowed instantly backaround her, so the dancer’s dance if you thinkabout it, if you follow where I’m lookingexactly,

is a violenceand a blissyou can’t exactly

locate

anywhere. It’s everywhere.

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Two

22

Stage Presence

Who is @roamingknitter and how’d she get that picture??!! Was she sitting on the edge of the stage?!

—Facebook fan site

These Facebook threads are like roots. You never know how far or where they go.—Facebook fan site

They wanted to unplug and I wanted to plug in and we met in that contradiction.—Interview

I.

Mind you she leanedinto it, busked and hustled like helleven before graduating high school, dropped out to outwitand outwork the Nothing that haunts all the land (so says her favoriteunending yarn) (which is a very good yarn), or more likely had to stay evenwith the inevitable simply because the inevitablein her case was a stir, a wow, a wonder. O her voice. You don’t wantto send back a package like that. She offered to haul their equipment, maybe nagged at the Twins such a wiseass young kid, total tomboy, who is this personwhat planet is she fromwith a sound that could turn you to goo or at least inside-out.

And the famous Auryn on both upper arms, sort of ouroboruscrossed with mandala, because I hear she really digs the symmetrical.

It looks like eternityis trying to hug her.

Or maybe the cosmos turningaround to look foritself,

and keeps on turning...

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*

Eventually the Twins (Seattle metal heads, also bald heads, kind of punk too andreally good guys, long-legged and kind, very songwriters) could not resist

her agitatedmind and generous heart, startling beauty—all encased in so slight a shape, one that now and then swaysand yaws, sways and jimmys, even jogs around the whole stage, even flat-out hops. Yeah. Straight up and down. Photos of her everywhere, bashing out a chord, both legs sharply bent at the knees, suspended and basically levitatingoff the stage.

*

I wish I could name what anyone’s chasing, what anyone’s leapingto catch. What im- or pro- pels The Singer? Sheer naked nerves? Gargantuan ego? Worrisome blood sugar? The maddening hum of time-to-come, the moment not-yet, a musical notethat is always and ever just taking shape but not yet clear of her lips—deliciousness

always almost?

Something down among the roots, perhaps. Something @roamingknitter

might know.

*

Whatever preciselyshe pursued, whatever preciselypursued her,

it all just finally collided, a Big Bang of angstfrom the sound of those early recordings—Fall and Temporary Time, When Angels Touchthe Ground, certainly Last One to Know—her sparkling oddness and sweetness, way androgynous,basically a brilliant queer angel who could actually yodel. Yeah, yodel.And write songs in any genre to save your lifebecause…because they compel you to feel it. Feel your heart beating feelthe ungainly radiance, fact

24

that someone or something created us to kill us. You have to admit, that’s a little bitfunny. One could damn-near chokeon the fucking silliness. Fuck.

II.

And so the Twins now are constant companionswho guide the winding string of her sound, winding it out and out and back again, in and allthe way in,

then back out again over and over in the crazy big lightsof the stage—

where sometimes she stands, just stands if she wants, circle of stilllight. But even then I believe she is spinningtoo fast to see, a glorious mad ballet, pure rock and roll groove—

ah God I love winding circles like Roethke’s winding circles—you know, his dancing idealized Woman—or,no, forget that, her moves are more Pollack, all fluid and all over. Or,

no, forget that too. Her dance is her dance is her dance. Can you imagine

that: to be like nothingbut yourself, aligned but a lineof movement defined by no man, although, like a line,and as we know from Geometry, theoretical. An idea made of language, in fact—just ask Derri Da Da and Saw Sewer and all of those guys, whom I love, by the way—

Hell, even ideas fail to synch up with themselves

… Meaning, my friends, a dark whisperof difference, always, between you and me, you and you, me and me, the thing and the idea of the thing, some say even thing and thing source of vasthuman heartbreak endless struggle and wailing maybe even yodeling

*

. And always the damned end-point of all

25

cogitation’s one tiny and writhingdot of paradox.

Most utterly utterly utterly utterly impossible singularity no braincan stay saneentertaining.

Only the Singer, or the Singer’s song,seems to unwind it , as she herself is unwound by the Twins into form.

[break]

26

III.

It’s troubling. Form isn’t form until it's over.

What I mean is, it can be pretty badfor those of us who have traveledvery great distances and drained our accounts and separatedourselves from loved onesto be there. The show stops, the encore or encores are demanded and played, and we sit there, finally, like stunnedfucking puppies and stupid as clamsas the house lights come on, on everyone, on everyone’s lone countenance BAM.

*

Meanwhile, her own earliest, kind of primeval "photo-shoot face" is so

casual. Retro sneakers and hip-hugger jeans, all PacificNorthwest teen or pre-teen even, a mere t-shirt in fact, silkscreened with popular green-lovers’ redwoods and wolves, one largecanine face staring dead-straight ahead andendangered (not really casual, LOL, whatsoever),

and someone has done up her eyes they are verydensely and darkly circled.

While in the very early promo of What Can I Say, a song about time, she sort of bounces a bit up and down with an emotion or spirit that is also scrunching her facealmost comically. I can’t tell if she’s trying to shake what she’s feelinglike ancient wounds and ancient transgressions out, or is haulingit all up from below likesome fisherman’s net,brimful of longings to-be.

And all in the presence of thousands, eventually millions of eyes. Because as you, too, may have noticed, my friends, she likes or needs to beseen. She has to holdherself back whenshe’s singing on-stage with a guest. She actually mouths the words of the guest singer’s part standing right beside themdistractingly, she practically nudges them like a jealous kid right off the stage. But it’s

27

not rude. It’s fine. It’s ok. Endearing, in fact. I think our poor girl’s afraidof disappearing

*—while at the same moment wantsto be fully gone, or at least fully with.

dying in the light of the room,

blind side please

. Look how she wades into the sold-out mob in Chicago, at Christmas, warm in her huge Santa hat.

Look how she smiles when hundreds of viewers join inimpromptu for Amazing Grace, how her face burstson like a sun

28

IV.

. I’m almost inclined to believe she’s divinely empowered. Though of course I well knowthat it’s all just performance, a habit of performing, she’s grown accustomedto considering walls. She practices.

As a kid, I guess, she’d wait till family were gone, the house was her own, to entertain volume. She’d really belt it out. She talks about this in interviews. She’d listen to popular singerswith the really big voices—Patsy Cline and Roy Orbison, Freddy Mercury, k.d. lang—and study the way to fill space with a sound till it stops or is stopped, rebounds or absorbs,but also has plenty of strength left to breakfree of the singer

… [I’m always imaginingsuch things. Do I imagine such things?The free part, I mean.]

And I think she practiced how a sentence when sung might stop and start, the zillion deliveries, overtones and undertones, easy or abrupt, prolonged or postponed

moment between sounds

, because the singing voice can do that, can flow and stretch, fade, evade and

silkymerge , CRASH in several thousand ways

, punctuate in infinitely variable, visceral ways. Even bend sounds into circles. Longings too. How I envy

the Singer.

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V.

Which brings us to the phenomenal, courageous and outrageousPIN DROP TOUR

wherein her voice

and band completely unplug. I mean they completelystrip away all gadgets and amps and electrical enhancement and sing directly into rawspace, straight into people’s ears. Nothing, apparently,in the way

, though of course our bodies and brains and all of our culturalgunk gunk everything up, we are absolutely axiomaticallyin the way (see page and part and chapter above)

*

. SO LET US SINGwhatever’s IN THE WAY, shall we?

Let us sing BODIES, raw bodies of all the old venues themselves—these rooms have

something to say , which is something that she would say

, because she’s wonderful like that

—with their crusty plaster ornaments, stately deco radiations. Also the smell, the temp, the depth and height and shape of a place, the mustiness or not, the ghosts or not;grunged-out peeling walls at Chicago’s old Thalia; imaginary night sky and “almost disturbinggrandeur” of the fabulous Fox in Atlanta; sweetness of Bluestem on the far away Plains…

What’s it like to sing, even, according to the stage itself? The elevation above the crowd, and the crowd? The actual human bodies in a vast room all together, their damp sadnesses, crackling moodiness, their craziness whirling and tilting on an axis made of lust, or something kind of like lust, and their joy?

*

30

her.

Sometimes something genuinely ugly. People holler from the audience, usually light,usually funny, but I’ve also heard them scream at the staff, probably minimum wage, who appear at the endto clear the place out. Fans mildlyderanged who seem to think encores heretofore, anymore, shall be ever-more

and wait to mob her at the studio door they just want we just want to be with her.

*

. So I think, now, of the Singer with her solitarybody on any given night. I want to ask about headaches, profoundweariness. What if you’re still feeling rattled, darling Singer,by a random weird dream from an afternoon nap? What if you just had a tensemisunderstanding with the wife not moments before,felt her interest suddenly and dramaticallycollapse, or what if you heardsomething new in her voice, a small lie, let us say, or evenher abilityto lie

… What’s it’s like to come suddenly out of the world and onto the dais? Does the world kind of stop? Or does it actuallyenlarge, does the stage hold more life, does it feel vastas time itself when you sing? Making you free but

inconsequential ?

*

And what about thorns I mean facts: when the show is scheduled, the show is scheduled. People from hundreds, even thousands of miles all around come to see you, we’re talking fans and roadies and band managers theater managers merch managers all kind of fucking managers I mean damn. And PR to be accomplished, the venue set up, the bar help hired and on and on. Certain nights, at least, you must surely feel that you can’t, absolutely can’t

not sing.

The moment is nailed into place. You are nailedto the moment.

What do the walls say then?

31

*

In the documentary, she talks with the Twins about how,without amps, without flash, you can't actually do ituntil you're actually doing it. You absolutely must

negotiate each particular

configurationof boundaries,

and each moment’s boundaries are minutely

and fleetingly distinct.

You’d better hurry. You’d better seizethis infinitesimal space and this infinitesimal moment

with a wordyou cannot

fake

I know I, for one, am inclinedto avoidsuch words.

God.

I can’t evenlook in a mirror, especially in public.

I deny everything

right to my own face.

How I envythe Singer.

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VI.

In what strange theaters, friends, do you house and perform and offer up your own endless woes? Are you able to gracefully managethe arbitrary harnessed to

the inevitable? Harnessed tounendingchange? After all, we all go

to work.We all say, Good day.

We try to make the lies as honestas possible

, even while saying the truthso shyly, so faithlessly,you’d think we were making it up.

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Three

34

The Contest

I don’t want to be part of the war. —BC I. I think of you waving something away, or waving to it,

just before you died, stoned on some hospice medication or other,curled up uncannily scant on the couch. Or you might have been gesturing, in fact, to usas we passed through the room, not knowing

how to talk to you now, each of us clenchedlike a fist

in each our distinct history,

no one holding your hand.(When Mom died, we gathered around her hospital bed;

we all held her hand. My wonderful family, she whispered to no one,

to everyone.) You kept pointing to something in the air,

and you kept pointing strangely at your feet.You kept pointing to your feet.

You had groused loudly, just days before, in your delirium,probably your last trip on your feet with the walker:

I have to get to the postoffice. I have put in a change

of address.Then you were talking to the air with your hand

which no one held as you died. *

35

Late in his life he was pissed about everything,a goddamned bitter heapof pissiness and ego. I don’t know what it addsup to. I’m holding still in a stillness. Always have.

One day a great performer, Beloved Artist, asks the world to writea story of forgiveness. Something real and hard as shit. Damn. For weeks, fans across the globewithdraw to their remote and frightening solitudes, trying to forgive the assholesin their lives. It’s acontest. Or a commandment. She doesn’t mean itthat way, but everyone is strangely aching for the task.

36

II.

His workbench in the dark of the greasy, dank garageeverything sort of soaked in oil. The tools all gleamedin the gloaming, gorgeously off-limits.

The time he stopped me there in secretto say Mom’s doctor had diagnosed emphysema.She was going to be ok, but she had to quit smoking.She would be okif she would just quit smokingBut she wasn’tquitting. She hadn’t quit. I didn’t know why he was telling me this.I was just a kid. What could I do? I guess he needed to tellsomebody.

*

They were both pretty good, actually,at hiding things. Hiding from things. We hid ourselves, meanwhile,crouching at the head of the stairs, and I remember him saying, down there in the livingroom, out of view,

This is myhouse.

Quietly, with low, almost delighted derision.

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III.

I had always heard that, as a young man,he liked to do sketches. But his art, later in life, appears to have been all in trees, shrubs, real Christmas hollybanked along the back fence, an unfinished stone patharound the big center oak. He installed an enormous patio too,out back with Ray, a just-married boy who took off his shirt.I watched and watched as the big cement mixergroaned out its crud, a kind of whitepowder settling over the scene as they laboredlike two sweaty snowmen, two earthly angels, Chalk and Cement.

Susan, Kellie: remember the time he hosed down the neststhat lined the eves of the house to the north? They were excessive, they were deemed

excessive,mud nests packed in a line up there, giddy new life, little mouth-headspoking up all over the place. I think now howcould he. God. The mess, the shattered shells, life in all of its mute stages of growth,and then the tiny riotous mouths.

I remember one miniscule gray thing there on the ground, featherless, a gigantic single eyeclosed over and not looking upat me. A frail thing mangled and worked overby the force of the hose, like a child’s gagged-on gum. * I honestly don’t knowwhether I love or hatehim. No wonderI can’t move.

38

IV.

He kept clicking his dentures.He sort of played with his teeth. I wanted to claw his face off. Mothers and daughters were the negative spacesthat made fathers and brothers real.

It's pretty messed up when your primary role in a storyis not to be there.

The way he dragged my motherto the beachso he could stare at other women. * One morning we came downto find him passed outin his own vomit. He was hanging half-offthe sofa, it felt likea painting. A stillness. It was like the house itself had been drunkthe whole night beforewhile the kids tried to sleep upstairs. My dad’s crazyholiday work parties.

My mom would come up to check us,tuck us freshly in,but it was all feverish and strange. Drunk adults squealing,banging on my brother’s drums down in the den. No onewas allowed to touch my brother’s drums. And someone,my dad’s secretary, banging on the drums and squealing,somebody my mother accusedhim of cheatingwith. Don’t think I don’t know.

You’ve always had a bed, her voice weirdly slowand baritone with bitterness,of roses.

39

V.

I think I forgave myself, at least, long ago.It’s my religion that tells me to.Forgive everyone, don’t be a jackassto anyone, and that includes yourself.I’ve more or less got it down. Maybe. Sometimes.

Because I do believe forgiveness is possible.

It just takes, literally, forever.

40

VI.

One time I saved three dollars in quartersand he took me to the TG&Y. I picked out a drum. It was red, I think, and I can still see itup there, on a really high shelf, much higher even than him.

He had to ask somebody for help.

Tom-tom mirage, a daemon companion,positively dizzying.

Later we’d backpack together all over the Sierras.We’d only ever hiketo the highest possible altitude, we’d cross ridiculous snow fields, massively steep, twelve or thirteen thousand feet, places like the Minarets,in work boots and sneakers from Sears.We didn’t know any better. We just kept climbing.

*

The air above treeline was crisp and tasteless.The sky got deeper and deeper blue.I suppose we wanted to walk right off the planet.

I supposed we were longingfor that one, killer view.

Meanwhile, getting back was actually harder. Maybe becausewe’d been over the same ground before,the switchbacks down were always grindingly slow,absolutely endless.

41

VII.

One year he promisedwe could open our usual morning gifts at four am. It totally irked my mom, but he was such a sweetheartabout it. We crept in, my sisters and I,we shook his shoulder gently You promised.

Four a.m., it felt like the middleof the night, the middle of a century, tearing into our middle-class bootylike animals in the dark,the Tree of course just standing there, aromatic and iconic, in lights.

My mom put on music.

*

Ray Charles’ country-western classic on vinyl,full-blast into the backyard all summer long. Your chee-eeeting heartwill tell onyou.

Waitingfor my mother to finishhemming my skirt,I couldn’t stand to juststand there, over and over, every little second,till she was done,cutting and sticking, pinningmy new clothes into place. *

My heart understands, I think. Forgiveness is when the mindgoes around and aroundthe problem of wrongbehavior, and cruelty. It just keeps going around, but as it spins it all gets smaller and smalleruntil forgiveness is like standing, finally,in the heart of a fire.

42

Where it seems to be very still,but isn’t.

*

Father, how dare you base your self-esteemon my mother’s lack? On my sisters’ lack? That’s fucked up,man. I hateyour guts. You and your Party.

At least we know that 45 is almost pure monster, not too manyarguments about that. The guy such a mess, I actuallyalmostfeel sorry for the narcissistic man-babycarnival prick.

And yes, I could see kindness in you. And fear. And gentleness. Imagine that.You made my friends laugh, you were actually a very funny guy. And if someone criedit completely tore you up.You’d even break down and cry with them. You didn’t like to seeanyone hurt. You beat our new basset puppy out backso badly the whole neighborhoodcould hear her screams in the sky.I was standing with Lauren out by the gateand the cries filled the sky andyou beat her because she kept pawingand digging in your landscaped yard. What kind of fucker.

43

VIII.

A single, dark bird, probably a crow, almost a speck, really,in the far distant sky in his painting. This was after he retired. It intrigued the whole family,but no one could explain it. Just somethingthere, both the focusand flaw of the whole composition.

44

IX.

Christ said that loving Godis the first new commandment, and loving our neighboris the second. But later on John of the Gospelssays that God is love. So the two commandmentsare kind of mixed up and mixed together. It doesn’t matter how you thinkabout it; you have to love bothto love either. * No wonder

it’s hardto move.

45

X. I could write my whole childhood, I think, if I tried,with lots of hard, physical, sensorydetail.

Randomviolence, this is myhouse. —said almost lyrically, laughing. That was the worse. A joltwent through my mother’sbody, I saw it, when he suddenly erupted, that evening in the kitchen,upon arriving home. I wouldn’t be surpriseif the whole neighborhood heard. I look back now and yes, I can seethe terrible stresses of the job, extra kidsin the house, trouble at work. We had to let himunwind,my mother said. Which meant do not utter a sound. Unlike Superman, Santa, and other great chieftains of the sky, guys down on Earthhave to slow the spinningdown, slowly, in their own unique ways,in silence, alone. This was something called life on Earthfor a man. * His last wordon the sofa, before he died,was Mama.

46

XI.

I wish I could talk to him now.I think he’d hear my arguments at last. My argumentsare strong, he’d have to. I think I’d maybe even liberateWorld War II and all of that stupid fifties gender shitright out of him, along with his vile Oklahoma racism. This damn life is socounter-intuitive, right,Dad?

Why livejust to die? Love, Dad,is the onlycommandment.

My mom taught us that familiestake care of each otherreligiously, but she was racist too. She knew better. She struggled with it.But she was unarguably racist too.

Mother: it's simple. We are allFamily. And yes, even his Party, that shithead 45, and Mitchell, and Ryan,and Pruitt, and Sessions? Oh God Sessions. I can’t find it in myselfto forgive them, exactly, but I get it. I know that serious jerks inhabit the world. I knowthey could beme. They are in and of.

I acceptthat. Yeah. For real. If I had grown upa different way, a different place, with differentlyfucked-up parents,

I could actually be

47

Mitch Fucking McConnell. Moscow Mitch. The Turtle.That’s what they call him on the webbecause it looks like a truckdrove over his face,a little. But it’s his power, its absoluteness,that pisses me off. These asshats have gerrymanderedAmerica so that noone can getaroundthem. God are theySatan? No. No, I don’tbelieve in that. Inand of.

Meanwhile, those loony, right-wing Dominionist nutsthink it’s a HolyWar. Two great enemies, a great unarguable chasm, they’re gonna getthis whole damned place blown up.

I should have taken his hand.

We should have taken his hand.

Who elseis gonna cross over, or try? Right through the fire.

Why we’ve enteredThe Contest.

Love is the onlycommandment.

*

Wouldn’t it be astonishingif love were greater even than God?

Dear God, do not

48

abandon us. Keep the childrenon both sidessafe. God we forgiveyou.

49

Four

50

Resort

People with guitars were singing,the sky was turning creamy colors,an "embryo monsoon" a half hour beforehad drenched everything spectacularly,and everything now was breathing deeply in.

Well, I was breathing in. In and out. Of that I’m pretty sure.

My flight had been rescheduled, twice in twenty-four hours,because hellacious winter weather on the Northern Plains.So I only had a day. Mere hours, in fact.

I wondered how I would decidewhat to do with a day.

John was signed out of the hospital, just days before, yet insisted I still pack, weather and madness not withstanding.You’d think the more there is to worryabout, the easier it would beto let it all just go. But no;I felt shitty going, I felt shitting staying.Then went, notwithstanding.

*

My roommate, a friend who’d gifted me the trip, was funny and and kind. Now and then she’d step outsidefor a minute to herself,looking across at the other balconies, other balconieslooking across at her.

She told me she had spottedsome amazing native birdsthere on the courtyard in the center, but I never witnessedany myself. I’d hoped at least to hear their famous squawksand cries around our building, around all the buildings, around the great green selva further

out.But no. There I sat, three thousand miles smack in the middle of the Yucatan,trying to imaginewhere I was.

*

51

Later, from a nearby patio with open bar,I had a view, more like a view of a view, across the lagoon (maybe natural, maybe not),across the distant ocean (weirdly smooth and blank),in the general direction of Cuba. Funny to think how, if I were to findmyself out there, in my own little boat, the sun full-on, according to purereason, Iwould be but a pointon a line,and thus imaginary.

Like anybody.

Meanwhile, the staggeringfact of my travel friend's wholly corporeal suffering.

Her back was damaged, see, by some infection long ago, and now her spine is arrondi, a brutally swooping, frozen question mark. Matternever not matter.

But who knows. Maybe it's the soul's own highjinks, after all, responsiblefor the dark, ecstatic experimentof the body. Or the mind, the punk human mind, now and forever stuck in the middleof a sharp u-turn: I was only kidding. Turn around. Get me out of here.

God’s creatures send up all kinds of cries.

*

So. Por favor? Forgive this tropical breeze of a beginning, friends.The story itself is trimas a bone, even slight, but language should let us breathe, no?

2.

52

I don’t know if it’s rude or fantastic or simply truthto speak of others’ private hardships. When should a person shut up, already? How much before they call you asshole or evenpost-confessional? Should truths rain down hardwhen in season, or is any single truth, however minor, however fleeting,itself all the truth? I mean evidence of Truth? Or already morethan anyone can stand?

In the end, maybe we just want some beautiful Art, now am I right?Beauty seasons and leavens us. Calms us. I keep hearing a lovely villanellein this poem. Does it want to be a villanelle?Should I have begun with a villanelle? I do, after all, repeat myself a lot. And I always want to get somewhereas much as I want to just keep going.

Let’s review. Truth is iffy if positioned at the startbecause it won’t be earned, no one will believe it, and, even if they did,we’d have nowhere left to goin search of it.

Introducing truthin the middle will only smother it.

And the end, well, the end is too much like a nuclearburp or the damned Rapture in miniature or something.

What is revelation anywayin a time of massive, historical, geopolitical gaslighting?

When you hear or think you hear a truth coming indo you guide or let it freely driftinto place? And if it’s false,will it go of its own volition (it won’t goof its own volition) to some great ancient peakwhere all the abominable, failed lines and stanzasand overblown endings congregate? A club of flubs, monumental drags, Christmas trees in summer? Think by now how many. Parings, Fizzlings.Some still maybe jabbering and slobbering with possibilities,if not banging their wee little heads against windowsor mirrors. Are they plotting something?Aren’t they in fact beautiful becausetheir sacrifice, after all, once made a poem or a book or a mere

53

morsel of witwork?

On the other hand,what if a poem held close and did its best to use, make space for,shrink to fitmost of its own scraps? Bonus tracks, haha.

I know; one could argue that a poemshould be clean and spare; stringent for the sakeof fuller joys. It should compel the readerto feel the most, intuit the most, in every sliver, every shard—yea, even so the holyunshardness containingand contained by everyshard. The chiseled bits say more and yield us more surprise,heart, and truth than discursive bloviations ever could. Let excesssink. Into body. Into memory. Let it enrich the poem that followsin ways we cannot guess.

On the other hand, how do you tell the muse-meister, I love your donation, dude,but I’m throwing fully halfof it out? I mean, we have no time to editour lives much less our scribblings, because the world’smore full of weepingthan we can possibly save-as,auto-check, or delete, because the Earth is moaninginside us at a particlelevel because America's a corporate snuff film featuring the planet—and children in cages.

Hence, should I leave in or outa few excess images and textures, gestures, a seemingly immediatepop in pulse? a lounge? a lagoon? Re-presented always, of course, but at least presented? This isn’t consumerextravagance. It’s joy. Ok joytinged with panic. Ok panicapproaching despair soaked to its eyeballs in grief. (Is there a word for grieving a futurewe’ve already passed?)

Even. Flowers.

May begone.

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Soon. At.

the rate we’re going.

Write “creamy colors” and “monsoon.” Write “fizzlings” and “bloviations.”Imagine a horizontal Tower of Babble, long-crashed, long trash,and beautiful. Down to raw material. Soil.

Ah, in a dream of forms, let us now scramble pagination. Let us re-say, unsay, or otherwise gerrywander every finale…

Like,what if the end of a book doesn’t actually occuruntil the third reading or more,and even then in the middle?The reader won’t get it till they get there.They won’t get there till they get it.At which point they may wantto blow their brains out. LOL But seriously.Couldn’t Borges meet up with Einsteinand imagine a space-time fabricof poetry? Somethingto jubilantly and usefully screwwith our heads once again?

Maybe any arrival is illusory, never there.Or forever not there yet.Or just keeps movingaround between drafts, driving you crazy.

Maybe it’s a relief to have no ending.There’s no confusion, then,about how to get there honestly.No discomfort when it’s an endingnobody wants.

*

Maybe any idea, or body, or worldsimply stops.

Because all things stop.

Let what else there is to say

55

continue on, somehow.

After Serious Consideration, I Have Decided

that my own demise must be creatively closed and open at once, meanings both desperately assertedand held up to belaughed at too. A frame, a definition, who I waswith giddy rips and gaps and all manner of lifeand incomplete answers slipping through. I want to leave my grandnieces and grandnephewsmy vinyl LPs and awesome etsy quilt and midcentury furniture and show kites ukuleles letters random notes and

booksa humongous ridiculous library in fact and yes my poems.

Who knows if they’ll read them, but at least some darlingkids will know

this odd personwas connected to them. It's theirs to say what else.

As for that larger, impending desecration, the one we either secretlydesire or have completely and unconscionably blotto-ed out: do not think twice. Do not

think once. WE MUST NOT LET THE PLANET DIE.

SOMETHING

has to be here, real and immanent, to receive our strange estates. Something has to bestowto us its glorious,barbaric succor.

No whining.

No "please" as interrogative.

56

DO. NOT. LET.

3.

The shuttle drivers down there will mess with youif you're female and alone. Not that I blame them, exactly. Americansare ignorant and funny, at best.

One guy drove me into the jungleat midnight and pretended he couldn’t find the resort.He was getting handsy too.Stupidly, and incredibly, I couldn't find the addressfor the place in my bag. I didn’t even have the numberof the resort to call the resort, nor anybody there.

God, I thought, is this how (cut up and buried in a jungle)and where (I already said a jungle)I will die (not breathing, of that I’m pretty sure)? Also, I tried but couldn’t dial out of country so that someonemight snag the address off the desk at home,or so that anybody anywhere would knowmy whereabouts.

My students, after all, hadn't heard that I'd be gone.No one at work knew that I was headedinto the steamy lower coils of the heartin a time of blizzards. I don’t think my local friends even knew.I wasn’t sure what to tell them on behalfof myselfand someone dearest locked away, unable to speak at all.

Then we were driving up the highway in the wrong direction,back towards the airport an hour and or more distant.

Finally, out of nowhere, he swung a gigantic Uright there on the highway of resorts, kind of grinning, I think, the jerk,and got me to the place at last.

There it was, all ugly stone compound from the front, lit up in the dark and draped with climbing vines and complete with uniformed guardflipping through a list of legal guests.

Strangely, that included me.

57

I who have forgotten alland I do mean allof my ninth-grade Spanish

—except, apparently, for Señor, and por favor? Pathetic

tourist. Tragic whisperof a cry.

Sure, someone will turn abruptly, by instinct, to say “huh?"—

but will he ever stop drivingyou nowhere as a joke.

4.

It's getting hothere on Earth. Somebody thinkof something.

5.

Walk alone on a beach. Partial Check

Feel the cleansing surf around your damaged knees. No Check

Sit quietly among the ruins of Chechen Itze. No Check

Drink some green mojitos, hear a certain marvelous crooner

on a liquid winter night

beneath the alien stars. Check

6.

The show would start in several hoursin a big outdoor plaza not far I think to the west.Older people were hanging out in the lagoonon immensely dumb-looking, inflatable animals—which is fine, I’m not judging—while young people, as early as that morning, I heard,

58

had already claimed their spacesin the pit at the very forward edge of the stage. Other young people were ready to hold their placesif they had to pee or go get something to eat,and they piled water bottles and daypacks so no mistakingwhose two-foot square was whose. I’ve been there; I was pretty sure there'd be actual bloody carnageif anyone were to cheat and cut in frontto see the star performer, a famous advocate of peace.

My own spot would be a chair and a lot further back.I have arthritis all over and numerous other failments.I couldn’t stand up frontbecause I feared that, in a crowd so seethingly tight, I would dieand no one would even know it until the showwas done and everyone was gone and I fell over.

No, I didn’t mind further back;or, at least, I was actually ok with it for once,with all of it— pain,

age…Sunsets down there

seem especially soft and so

incremental. I don’t believe in epiphanies anymore than I believe that driving in circlesforever is a way to end something.

59

Bonus Tracks

scrap

Lord, let me stop breathing,when I stop breathing,without decrepit body or damaged brains.I want to be here when I go.

scrap

End. Begin!Relax. Move!Feel. Think!Poem. Spend!Release. Redact!Quit. Prolong!Beauty. Minutes!Minutes. Feel!Bouillabaisse. Mayonnaise!Naught. Nonce!Drought. Now! Flood. Now!Fire. Now!Tree. Breathe.End. When.Gone. Song.Tongue. Stone.

scrap

From my small patio table, late in the afternoon, I might have heardbut couldn't seestunningly colored birds all around us.

scrap

Endingsare perhaps the realstory. They making the weeping real.

scrap

60

Endingsmake the weeping now.

61

Five

Here you are says a voice in the light, the trapped light. Be happy.—Teacher

Guest Appearances by Neil Young and The Thing with Feathers

62

Bashing out retarded simple chordsand obsolete, grinning-idiot MELODY

there in his

gigantic furry hippie-boots, he’s some iconic, bionic, and ironic Canadian Sasquatch Punk o’Planet Earth.

Music heart-thwacking fully amped-up feedback-stinging religion. The Romantic re-emerging

or staying, despite everything, a scary century of, well, you-name-it—corporation-as-legal-person circa 1893to the start of never-ending war circa September, 2001—

not to mention the sensible-logical specu-lattesof Derrida et al re: presence construction culture and all the rust—theRomantic I guess still viable circa now, albeit stunned,lopsided, and leakingblood from every thought, cough, pore andhigh-pitched whine ofI-can-hardly-force-

myself-to-say-it but I will, I’ll say it circa here

and now as hard as

I can’t to the

nth: h©pE.

Empathy for Fat Elvis and Notes Toward the Impeachment of Dread

63

1.

Thing is, you absolutely have to conjurethe dirt-poor kid from Mississippiwho sucked up gospel, country and bluestill he bled them, a bruisy-eyed boy with blistering talent and near-giddy energy,and certainly not the sad manof bizarrely elongated collars, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches,and don't even get me startedon the cape.

Of course he had no idea he'd usher inone of the goofiest eras of human god worshipever known to our species. He couldn’t see ahead to the look-alikes,no inkling he’d be studied in university coursesas a Distantly EmergentPosthuman Cultural Artifact.

(In death, of course, he's all proto-metamodernJesuscoming soonto a dying planet near you).

Anyway.

When the King sings the Dixie trilogy, very very late,when he's the Elvis no one voted for,the Elvis who never made it onto a stamp—

you believe him. That song is waytoo sad as he intermittently and obliquelyapologizes for his bloated drugginess,unseemly giggling when he forgets the lines.He is mourning his ownand everyone's golden beginnings,even as he sees his own ignominiousand nightmarish endclearly coming down the pike.

You can hear it in his voice, those final shows.He was preparing.

64

2.

I've heard it said that to live a good lifeyou must be ready to die a good death;in fact your life should be spentgetting ready to die.

Sounds pretty godawful, yes?My own dread shoots through the roof.

But I know that Tibetan adepts, for one, flat-out practice.Right down to the instantof letting go. They are always letting go. They spend half the day unclasping.They are completely aligned in life with death, and yet more alive than the rest of usbecause focused and clear and still.

In meditation they feel cool air quickly warmin the mouth, all the way down the throat and into the lungs, and back out. They observe every thoughtprecisely when a thoughtemerges like a slow liquid arrow and crosses throughand out of the mind, and they do not cling to a self. To a story. Certainly not to some retrievable, gold-plated past.(Please do not cry to go there.It is both a sentimentaland fascist delusion.)

And some adepts die sitting up. Cessationis ambiguous; the flesh does not even degrade. Tapa monk’s corpse and it bursts into—what? Conceptionlessnonpermanence. Rigpa shunyata dharmadatu, so many damned formulations, so many words

for wordlessness—or just the next hungry body.

3.

Elvis’s long-heralded returnin ’68, I think, after all of the hideous movies,was a moderate shock. I don’t know, I guess I thoughthis hair and clotheswould be mildly hippified, at the least,what with the Summer of Love and all that.But he dressed like a retro cartoon teddy boy, a fifties rocker

65

shellacked in black leather, a superhero whose superhero brotherswore tight outfits too but could fly.

Elvis couldn’t fly. He had to manage on the ground in secret.

For all of his ironic self-inflation,they say he was a humble and kind man, always.He would never hurt a soul down here.

And he had such a time singinghis self-spangled comeback. For some of it, the band was seated in a casual circle on a very small stage, an intimate live audience, and he kept grinning at his bandmateslike they all knew the world’smost acutely sweet secret. They all knew the world's most acutely sweet secret,and were letting us have it,one quarter teaspoon at a time.

Like there wasn’t a single notehe wouldn’t die alive for.

4.

2019. People are walking around in near-cryonicstates of the soul, when not boiling over with anger and stress.

It’s this other king, a tabloid celebrity ratcheted upto hugely puke-worthy, banana-republic con.Might as well say it again. Fascist.

Donald, if you really want to bully uswith your ongoing freaky, petty, and vindictive tweets,if you want the media scandal of all scandals,just remind us in your daily belchesthat we are all going to die. Think of it!You can get back at anyonewho has ever called you a goon or a foolor pure moral slime on MSNBC.Just tweet out to everyone DEATHDEATH DEATH DEATH just whisper itin one-hundred and thirty-nine charactersplus a tiny emoji skull.

But you won't. I know you won't.

66

BTW, you are too stupid to breathe.

*

BTW, I'm not intimidated by any of your tweets. I'm strong. I can talk about all that I don't have in this lifeand I can talk about allthat I will someday not be. I've been preparingfor awhile, ok? Even today, right here.

*

Maybe we should turn the whole ugly thingback on you. Maybe we should march in the thousands or millionsto the White House and eruptin one glorious voice Donald Trump you are going to die!Someday, Donald Trump, you really are going to die!Fool yer already dead and don't know it!Think about it, Cheeto!

At which point they'll arrest me and put me in Gitmo,where they'll torture me till I talk.

I won’t know what to say, except Viva, vivaLas Vegas! and of course they will kill me.

That's ok. I'm prepared.

*

Well, I'm preparing. I'm trying.

Friend, if you’re there, it would helpif you could whisper any tender,mad truth you hold close to your life.

What I mean is, let’s collaborate.I’ll tell you my nightmaresIf you’ll tell me yours.

Lyrical Village

67

1.

The Lyrical Villageis the famous Sahara Desert, where grains of sand rub together in the windand sing. Did you know that? Sand sings. Planets too. Icebergs and whales, wolves, a young vocalist raised on country westernand pop just outside of the City that Rains,two guitarists who loved the Beatles and Ramones,a quiet cello player whose past is uncelebrated, quiet.

I mean it's his cello that speaks. I mean it articulates silence.

You probably don’t believe me. I'm just trying to saythat equal in mystery to any thing—grain of sand or planet, beloved Creation, beloved breath itself—anythingwe can lose —forever— now—is the Lyrical Village.

*

I think I just articulatedthe oppositeof what I meant. And yet I also said the opposite of that. Allof which is the LyricalVillage too, “meaning”no, I'm knowing knowing now. Plus awe. Oh never

Mind.

2.

The Lyrical Villageis the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London.It’s Edmonton's festival out on the Canadian plains,Cayamo on the sea, stops in New Orleans, Cozumel, and Harvest Caye. Even the Singer's tour bus is the Lyrical Village. The grit on the tour bus wheels.The desire to sing and singing per se. The throat of the singer, the tongue, the wind, the nothing. The alignments of identical twinsand the hilarious deflectometrics. Everything Walt Whitman ever saidis the Lyrical Village. And sex sex sex sex—grief, the Milky Way in a dream about hammers and looms,things that crawl the ocean floor, the forest no more, the ice caps

68

gone, never to return, these are the Lyrical Villagewhere I must stop now in order to breathe.

*

The Singer often hums a quick bluesor gospel riff seconds before startingher actual song. It’s how she warms up.

Blues and gospel, back in the day,were the pure pain and moan of people who were voiceless, see?

Without which beautyis voiceless.

Life's a Long, Unspooling Series of Rooms, Very Doomy Rooms,

69

you stumble, you race, you clomp through forever and cannot reach.

And always you find yourself missing.

In fact you only know you’re alivein here because you feel something twist, some kind of torque,a spiraling energy in place of an I, and as onely. This year be a groupie at nearly sixty. A kind of projectthat stumbled upon you and stuck. You call it incandescence.You follow the darling artist, schedules taxis and tickets, you get on a plane and off a plane and dance with the other sweet angel crazieswhen the artist encourages such, when she cuesyou to rock the place clear to the ground.You love to rock the place clear to the ground, an epically awesome remodeling, your face fully melty, truly you do, but latelylong to sit very still and be quiet.

Sit very still and be quiet. The Singer is going away—in certain songs, please, if you listen—into her emptiness, her solitude.

She may look eternally young,but her soul we know is ancient,and sad, and sore.

*

Her tour bus is long and dark, you can't see in. Understandable; the more a star is pursuedthe further they must goaway.

love—withdraw

love—withdraw

*

She’s doping us up on her voice real good, she's ridiculously good.And if we’d only shut up, if we’d only stay put, she may actually deliver us there, way down there at the heart of the song unsingable

70

and we are all of us no one together.

Notes & Acknowledgments

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“Dirty Pioneers, The State of the State, and The Fabulous Woman Who Dances”

“a rolling holy/boulder down the crazed and crumbling lanes”: adapted from Brandi Carlile’s “Things I Regret.”

"I'm, Like, Way Too Ethereal"

"opposite equals advancing": Whitman, Song of Myself

“Stage Presence”

The second-to-last epigram: BBC.com, Entertainment & Arts, “Brandi Carlile finds her rock and roll voice”: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31310552

The lines “who is this person/what planet is she from”: adapted from a statement made by Phil Hanserof on CBC Radio Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2669832744

Auryn and “unending story”: Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“[T]hese rooms have something to say”: Brandi Carlile, The Pin Drop Documentary, Chapter 1: http://www.brandicarlile.com/media-items/2016/6/14/brandi-carlile-pin-drop-tour-documentary-chapter-13

“[D]ying in the light of the room,/blind side please": Brandi Carlile, “In My Own Eyes.”

Part Five

Line attributed to "Teacher”: Jorie Graham, Fast.

"The Singer's Wife is Also a Singer"

This poem appeared in Isthmus Review, Spring/Summer 2016.

“How does it feel”: Dylan.

“Fields of Gold," the song and italicized lines: Sting

“Life's a Long, Unspooling Series of Rooms, Very Doomy Rooms,”

“you only know you’re alive/in here because you feel something twist”: an adaptation from Brandi Carlile's “Eye of the Needle.”

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